Canon, Canyon, Cannon: Well Dressed

Black, poet, queer-god, hip-hop feminist, womanist: Porsha Olayiwola is a native of Chicago who now resides in Boston. Olayiwola is a writer, performer, educator and curator who uses afro-futurism and surrealism to examine historical and current issues in the Black, woman, and queer diasporas. She is an Individual World Poetry Slam Champion and the founder of the Roxbury Poetry Festival. Olayiwola is Brown University's 2019 Heimark Artist -In -Residence and a poet laureate fellow with the Academy of American Poets. The author of i shimmer sometimes, too published by Button Poetry and Olayiwola is the current poet laureate for the City of Boston. Her work can be found published with TriQuarterly Magazine, The Boston Globe, Essence Magazine, Redivider, The Academy of American Poets, Wildness Press, The Museum of Fine Arts, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and elsewhere. Olayiwola joined the faculty of Brandeis University as the Jacob Ziskind Poet-In-Residence in Fall of 2022.

Porsha Olayiwola, Photo Courtesy of the Artist.

Danez Smith (they/them)

Danez Smith is a Black, Queer, Poz writer & performer from St. Paul, MN. Danez is the author of Homie, (Graywolf Press, 2020), winner of the Minnesota Book Award, the Heartland Bookseller Award, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Don’t Call Us Dead (Graywolf Press, 2017), winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Midwest Booksellers Choice Award, and a finalist for the National Book Award; and [insert] boy (YesYes Books, 2014), winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. Danez is a member of the Dark Noise Collective and is the co-host of VS with Franny Choi, a podcast sponsored by the Poetry Foundation and Postloudness.

Danez Smith, Photo by David Hong.

Chrysanthemum (she/her)

Chrysanthemum is a poet, performance artist & community historian. A Kundiman Fellow, she first broke ground as a finalist of the 2016 Women of the World Poetry Slam representing the Providence Poetry Slam. As a Lambda Fellow in Poetry, she was awarded the 2023 Justin Chin Memorial Scholarship.

She is a champion of the Rustbelt Poetry Slam & the inaugural FEM Slam. As the recipient of a MacColl Johnson Fellowship from the Rhode Island Foundation, she organized the no-cost Vanishing Point Writing Retreat to connect Asian poets in diaspora through collaborative, peer-led instruction. With poet & longtime collaborator Justice Ameer, Chrysanthemum wrote & staged the multidisciplinary show ANTHEM at the American Repertory Theater's OBERON, weaving poetry, music, song & media arts into a lyrical performance exploring the lasting legacies of historical vanguards on the contours of race, sex & gender.

Chrysanthemum’s writing confronts the historical inconsistencies rooted in the clinical & legal vestiges of empire. Featured by PBS & WBUR, she appears on stages across the country & in publications including The Nation, Them, Bettering American Poetry, among others. Residing in Providence, she came of age in Oklahoma City between the 39th & Penn gayborhood & the Vietnamese American enclave. Outside of poetry, she moonlights from the underbelly of trans health systems. She’s developing her debut collection of poems, which explores contradictions, deletions & distortions in queer archives by reckoning with legal, medical & military histories of gender transgression.

Chrysanthemum, Photo by Allie + Jesse.

Jarvis Subia (he/him/his)

Currently based in the Boston area but born and raised in San Jose’s Seven Trees neighborhood, Bay Area Spoken Word Poet Jarvis Subia (flowerboywrites.com) is a Queer Latinx flower-loving Millennial devoted to performing poems from his heart to yours. The 2019 Poetry Foundation and Crescendo Literary’s Incubator Fellow, recipient of the 2019 Silicon Valley Creates & Content Magazines Emerging Artist Award, 2019 Multicultural Artists Leadership Institute (MALI) fellow, and San José Poetry Slam’s 2018 Grand Slam Champion has competed in 14 national and regional poetry slams. Most recently, Jarvis earned his Ed.M from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, studying the impact of spoken word poetry in K-12 schools. Jarvis' first published chapbook, "Hello Joy" is now available through Nomadic Press.

Jarvis Subia, Photo Courtesy of the Artist.

Imani Davis (they/them)

Imani Davis is a queer Black writer from Brooklyn. A recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem, Lambda Literary, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, StoryStudio Chicago, and the Stadler Center for Poetry, they hold a B.A. in English and Africana Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. They’re currently a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies at Harvard, where they also earned their M.A. in English. Imani’s poetry appears with The Academy of American Poets, Best New Poets, Best of the Net, PBS News Hour’s Brief But Spectacular Series, The Poetry Foundation’s Ours Poetica, Poet Lore, The Rumpus, Shade Literary Arts, The Offing, Brooklyn Poets, Poetry Daily, Frontier Poetry, Honey Literary, TEDx, ROOKIE Magazine, Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. Notably, they have performed at the Teen Vogue Activism Summit, the Apollo Theater, Brave New Voices, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Kelly Writers House, and their home venue, the Nuyorican Poets Café.

Imani Davis, Photo by Karen Yang of The Excelano Project.

DJ WhySham aka Your Community DJ is a four-time nominated DJ/Producer, Visionary, Activist, Traveler, Sister, God-parent and Dorchester Native. WhySham is the CEO of “Boston Got Next Entertainment and Bringing Back Boston (BBBMA) now known as “The Social Justice Trap Movement, Inc.' She believes in bringing music, hardship and pain together while creating events as a release for collective trauma. WhySham is an On-air Radio Personality for SparkFM Online (Lunch Is Ova) on Thursdays at 1PM ET.  Follow on Instagram: @whysham617.